The Flip Side Of Acceptance

A few days I wrote a post about acceptance. In it, I quoted the best part (in my opinion) of the Big Book is where it talks about the necessity of accepting people and situations in your life exactly as they are. But how do you handle it when the people around you fail to play by these rules?

There are a few examples of this in my life currently, and, I have to tell you, it is difficult to deal with. It is hard enough accepting people for who and what they are, but when they are not accepting you, the hill becomes that much steeper to climb.

The high road should be (I guess) that you can’t control what other people think, say or do, so if you are comfortable with your own actions, you don’t need to worry about anyone else’s. Theoretically that is a wonderful thought; practically speaking, it is near impossible for me to accomplish. And, honestly, I have a hard time accepting that we are really, really supposed to not care how the people we love are feeling… if they are feeling hurt by us, whether they are right or wrong, are we really supposed to say, “oh well! I didn’t do anything wrong, so I simply don’t care that someone is hurting!”? That seems unrealistic at best; mean-spirited, at worst.

Like I have written many times before, I certainly don’t have all the answers, and this is one time when I am not sure I know what’s right and what’s wrong. For me, I am always going to care if someone around me is hurting, I just have to be careful not to let it undermine how I am feeling about myself and my actions.